


Neither one prepared

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Fairytales and Fripperies [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairytale, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When is a beast not a beast?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neither one prepared

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theMightyPen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theMightyPen/gifts).



> The long overdue Beauty and the Beast of Princess Sansa. Enjoy!

Three-and-ten is young to be widowed and remarried, particularly to husbands such as Sansa had been granted.

She had nearly sung when Tyrion choked and died on the wine at Joffrey's wedding, even though such joy at a death was surely evil - but widowed, what hold did the Lannisters have over her? What other of them was there for her to wed unless, laughably, Lord Tywin himself took her to wife?

Widowed, how could the Tyrells have any difficulty in spiriting her away to the longed-for safety and freedom of Highgarden?

Of course, it was not so simple. Nothing in Sansa's life had been simple since King Robert visited Winterfell, and she had been foolish to expect this to be any different.

 

* * *

 

Highgarden was just as beautiful as Margaery, still in King's Landing with her husband, the poor thing, had promised. Everywhere Sansa turned there was some new thing to marvel at, and Ser Garlan and Lady Olenna seemed amused by her wonder, but Lady Alerie and Lady Leonette were more sympathetic, Lady Leonette confessing that she had been similarly overawed upon her own initial experience of the seat of House Tyrell.

Her husband-to-be was nowhere in sight when they arrived at the doors, and Sansa did not miss how her hosts exchanged worried looks that were almost resigned.

"Come, Lady Sansa," Ser Garlan said, offering her his arm. "I will show you to your rooms - I am sure you will meet my lord brother at dinner this evening."

Sansa was so relieved at the sight of the gently steaming bath in her room and the sure knowledge that Cersei could not possibly have bought her new maid, a pleasant, plump woman called Marian, that she forgot to fret about her betrothed's absence and apparent rudeness.

But when he did not appear at dinner, not even sending a note of apology, she began to worry quite sincerely.

 

* * *

 

And so it went - Ser Garlan and Lady Leonette departed for Brightwater within the week, with the promise of returning in time for the wedding, gods willing. Lady Alerie occupied her time with the running of Highgarden and, as far as Sansa could discern, much of the Reach in her lord husband's absence, and Lady Olenna retired to an exquisite set of rooms on the south-west corner of the wonderful keep with a coterie of whispering ladies of mature vintage, who seemed to know everything about everyone in the Seven Kingdoms.

Sansa wandered Highgarden, alone for the most part, and discovered more gardens and libraries and music rooms and solars and solariums than made good sense, each one lovelier than the last. She dressed in the most beautiful gowns she had ever seen, far too sumptuous for everyday wear, in her opinion, but she allowed Marian to help her dress and set her hair every morning.

She visited the kennels, and was delighted to discover that there had been not one but  _two_ litters of pups born shortly before her arrival, and she quickly made her visits a regular thing, filling hours at a time with the sweet little creatures who yipped and jumped up on her satins and silks and licked her fingers and made her smile as so little had in so long.

She learned, properly, how to play the high harp from Lord Tyrell's sister, Lady Janna, who had accompanied them from King's Landing, using her swelling belly as reason to excuse herself from court.

She read books, and wrote poems, and wrote letters that she wished she might have sent a long while ago, to Mother and Father and Robb and Arya and Bran and even to Rickon, although he would not have been able to read them.

She did not meet her betrothed. Willas Tyrell was as much a dream to her as he had been in King's Landing, and she wondered if he had died and the Tyrells wished so desperately to hold onto her claim that they had hidden it from her and the Lannisters alike.

 

* * *

 

On the morning of her wedding, Sansa woke only to Marian and Lady Alerie.

"You need not be nervous, sweetling," Lady Alerie told her in her oddly lilting voice. "I know that Willas has been... Distant, but he will treat you kindly."

_He will leave me to myself,_ Sansa thought as she allowed Lady Alerie to help her into the wedding gown she had spent many mornings being fitted for. It was exquisite, just as so much about Highgarden was - all silk and lace and pretty little trimmings - and she felt impossibly beautiful in it.

She wondered if she would see her soon-to-be lord husband, or if he would see her so he might judge her beauty for himself.

 

* * *

 

He was younger than she had expected.

He looked barely a year older than Ser Garlan, but aside from that she knew not what to make of him. His beard was rough, such as she remembered some of her father's wilder bannermen wearing theirs, and his hair curled untidily about his face, reaching near to his shoulders in a tangle. Even his doublet, beautifully tailored and made of lovely deep green velvet, stitched with delicate hints of golden roses, was not fully fastened and hung awkwardly on his massive shoulders, as broad as Ser Garlan's, as though he had thrown it on only at the very last moment.

He could not hold her hands through the ceremony, as he ought, but he did set aside his crutches long enough to draw her Stark white from her shoulders and replace it with Tyrell green, and he kept one hand free for just long enough to cup her face and draw her mouth to his for a kiss that surprised her in its gentleness.

And then it was as if they were strangers. 

_We are, I suppose,_ she thought, sitting at his side and sipping her wine as he leaned to his other side, deep in fevered conversation with his brother.

Sansa sat silently through her second wedding feast, just as she had through the first.

 

* * *

 

There was no call for a bedding.

Instead, Lord Willas rose to his feet - well, as best he could - and turned to her, and spoke the first words she had ever heard him speak directly to her beyond their marriage vows.

"My lady, if you will?"

She rose with him, dipped a curtsy to Lady Alerie, and followed after him as he led her through a part of the castle she did not know.

"My rooms," he explained curtly, pushing open the door with a crutch and motioning for her to enter ahead of him.

She sat on the edge of the bed in the inner chamber, waiting for him, and could not understand it when he undressed behind her, climbed into bed, and lay down as if to sleep.

"I have no desire to rape you, my lady," he told her over his shoulder. "Make yourself comfortable and get what rest you can - no doubt my mother has a day planned for you on the morrow, and you will be tired already from today without my exacerbating it."

 

* * *

 

And so it was, but it was different now.

Sansa dined with her husband every night - he was gruff in manner, and a poor conversationalist when he spoke at all. Still, she sensed that he was not as bad as he seemed, for how could it be that his family would speak so highly of him, regard him with such warmth, if he  _were_ as bad as he seemed?

Sometimes, Sansa felt like rebelling against his treatment of her - it was not ill-treatment, merely disrespectful in that he seemed to disregard her as anything more than a burden placed on his shoulders by his family, an unwanted tie foisted upon him by well-meaning but ill-advised parents. She felt like behaving as Arya might in such a situation, throwing tantrums and refusing to dress appropriately for their engagements, refusing to comb her hair because who was there that paid her any attention save her new goodmother?

Lady Alerie was a balm - she spent her days showing Sansa the running of Highgarden, in anticipation of returning to her husband and daughter in the capital (and Ser Loras, but Sansa tried hard not to think of her lord husband's beautiful brother lest her heart shatter for what might have been), and Sansa took comfort in the routine of her days because there was little else to take comfort in than the beauty that surrounded her.

And then, one morning, a neat little man was presented to her with a note in definite, slanting hand, a note from her lord husband introducing the man as her new music teacher.

"Lord Willas is a skilled musician himself," the little man explained, leading her towards one of the many music rooms. "He believes that you would enjoy the dulcimer, my lady."

Sansa did enjoy it very much, even that first morning, and it surprised her enormously that her husband should have known such a thing.

 

* * *

 

Dinner was easier now that Sansa knew for certain that she had something truly in common with her lord husband - she had something that she could force him to discuss in the form of music, and she was elated when music became poetry became stories became art.

And then, one day, he arrived himself at her door and asked if she would mind taking a walk with him in the gardens. She agreed easily, eager to know more of what he enjoyed, more of what made him a man rather than an ill-tempered shadow that haunted the huge suite of rooms they shared.

His temper near turned before they reached their destination, whatever it was - his crutches slipped on an unswept stretch of paved pathway, and he swore loud and furiously, cursing the gardeners who had been lax in their duty, and just barely reining himself in after catching her eye for a moment.

"Forgive me, my lady," he growled, chest heaving as he fought himself - Sansa knew how that looked, for she fought the strange wildness in her chest every day now, and sometimes wished that she did not have to fight it at all. "I forgot myself."

He did it often, she found, forgetting himself - his temper snapped over the slightest things, sometimes bursting forth in great howls of rage, other times curdling behind furious snarls that curled his lip over his white, white teeth, and occasionally twisting past those teeth in a stream of boiling snarls, all filled with filthy curses that Sansa's father would have struck Robb or Jon for uttering.

She said nothing, though. She waited, regarding him coolly, and followed on when he motioned that he was ready to continue.

There was something wild in her husband, Sansa thought, something that she had not expected to find so far south. 

Surprising herself, she found that she rather liked it. It made him so much more real than her imagined image of Joffrey or Ser Loras, made him so tangible that even in her dreams of him (which happened sometimes, when they had dinner together and he did not lose his temper but rather spoke at length and with that queer intensity of the things he loved) it was as though she could touch him.

She had yet to do so, of course, and he had yet to make any move as though to touch  _her_ , but she sometimes dreamed of it and wondered why he was so very distant.

 

* * *

 

He had created her very own maidenpool for her in Highgarden, she found when they reached their destination.

"You mentioned that you particularly loved the story of Florian and Jonquil," he explained, looking embarrassed, "and I spoke with some of the gardeners - the pool was here already, but I thought... We cannot grow a weirwood here, or winter roses, we have not the climate, but at least the silver birch has pale bark and the hydrangeas are the right colour, more or less. I thought it might be something of your home."

How he could possibly be embarrassed of such a thoughtful thing she did not know, but because she could that it had cost him a great effort to show her this little slice of home, of her dreams, she decided to expend a similar effort of bravery.

His beard was scratchy under her lips, his shoulder firm and warm under her hand, and his eyes were impossibly wide when she drew away.

"Thank you, my lord," she said softly, daring to smile up at him, daring to stand just a little closer. "It is perfect."

 

* * *

 

And then, a nightmare filled her every moment, waking and sleeping alike.

"The King has written," Lady Alerie informed her one day, as they perused the accounts for the kitchens. "He is bringing my daughter home to visit - they will be here very soon, sweetling."

Just like that, the tentative, turbulent peace Sansa had forged with her husband was gone, torn away by Joffrey's return to her life.

_He will bed me,_ she thought, locking herself away in her bedchamber and hardly stopping herself from hiding beneath the bed.  _He will bed me and ruin me and I will be lost, all will be lost._

It was her husband that found her, hours later, curled up in one of the huge armchairs in their tiny library, guiding her to stand before him and startling her by taking her hands in his, balancing on his good leg and staring hard into her eyes.

"I will not allow him to harm you," he told her, his voice a rumble of promise and threat that she could almost feel vibrating along his arms and into hers, as though carrying his oath that he would protect her from Joffrey.

 

* * *

 

The royal couple's arrival in Highgarden was marred by two temper tantrums - one public, one private, but neither the less intense for its placement.

Joffrey's, of course, was public - nothing was to his liking, particularly not Margaery, it seemed, for he flew into a violent rage when he emerged from his wheelhouse to find that she had ridden through the gates on horseback rather than making use of the handsomely appointed wheelhouse he had declared hers for the journey.

He hissed a command, and the white of Meryn Trant's gauntlet blackened Margaery's eye before any of the many watchers could react. 

Willas' was in private, in the safety of their rooms, but it was somehow all the more frightening for that, because Sansa had never seen a rage like it from her grumpy husband.

"Please," she begged him, ducking about his crutches as he swung them in anger, pressing her hands to his straining chest. " _Please,_ he will hear, and he will hurt you, too, and I could not bear to be his again-"

"You will never be his if that is not your will," Willas swore, "not  _ever."_

 

* * *

 

Joffrey's breath smelled of wine and rot and death, and Sansa turned her head away.  _I am taller than him,_ she noted distantly, straining to keep her body as far from his as she could, wishing she could press back  _through_ the wall at her back.

"Your cripple could never satisfy you," he snarled againt her ear, damp and horrible, and somehow it was more bestial than all of Willas' bellows and growls. "You will be mine if I want you, slut, for how could he possibly protect you?"

 

* * *

 

She did not know how, but Willas discovered her little encounter with the King.

"I will destroy him," he vowed. "For you, and for Margaery, I will  _destroy_ him."

That strange wildness in Sansa's chest echoed his rage, and she dared to curl against his side when they sat together before the fire that night, thrilled by the sudden warmth of his arm around her shoulders, by the frantic hammer of his heart under her ear.

 

* * *

 

After three long, terrifying days of desperately trying to avoid Joffrey while comforting Margaery, Sansa was given a respite.

"The menfolk will tire themselves out with their riding," Margaery sighed, reclining stiffly on a splendid divan in her lady mother's solar. "And we might have some rest for the evening - tell me, Sansa, how are you enjoying Highgarden?"

Margaery drank in her stories with the sort of hunger Sansa sometimes saw in Willas' eyes when he watched the men in the practice yard, a hunger borne of longing and jealousy, and begged to be shown Sansa's maidenpool.

She had not shared it with any but Willas (and the gardeners, she supposed), but how could she deny Margaery anything? Margaery had saved her from the beast-in-truth and given her to the beast-in-name (although Sansa still did not understand the revulsion some considered Willas' impediment with, for what was a bad leg when it supported a mind such as his?).

 

* * *

 

The King and his men returned in uproar, and Sansa turned immediately to Willas for an explanation.

"His Grace insisted on riding Gargoyle," Willas said, "even when I warned him that the damned horse is not broken in yet, not truly, despite my best efforts."

Sansa stayed close to him as Joffrey was carried past on a stretcher, pale and dead looking, and she did not even dare pray for his death, no matter how much she wanted it.

 

* * *

 

The King and his court returned to King's Landing within the week, citing the necessity of better care than was available at Highgarden for the King.

The King, who was now more a cripple than Willas was or even than Lord Tyrion had been, men who had suffered his ridicule at every turn.

The King, whose back had broken in the fall from Willas' wildest horse, the horse that Sansa knew was never stabled near the others for fear that he would do them harm.

Sansa felt a thrill just as she had when Willas wrapped his arm around her at the realization that she was wed to a man who was near a kingslayer.

 

* * *

 

"Would you have killed him?" she asked a long while later, after word had come that Joffrey was on his deathbed and Margaery would soon be returned to Highgarden, safe to the bosom of her family until it was the appropriate time for her to wed her husband's brother and heir. "For me?"

"I would do a great many things for you," he admitted quietly, looking embarrassed and surprised by his admission. "Including combing my hair, it would seem."

 

* * *

 

The King's death was celebrated as a wedding in Highgarden, but even that paled in comparison to the festivities for Margaery's return home.

Sansa was surprised, on the day of her arrival, to find Willas and Garlan and Loras (somehow expelled from the Kingsguard, or given leave, or  _something,_ Sansa did not understand and she did not ask lest she risk spoiling the mood) disappeared off deep into Highgarden, away to Loras' rooms, where she had never gone. She remained with Margaery, radiant in widowhood, and Lady Alerie and Lady Olenna, and had a lovely day, just as so many days in Highgarden were lovely.

There was a feast that night, with singers and musicians and dancers and jugglers and tumblers and all manner of entertainer, and Sansa whooped and gasped and laughed along with Margaery as they watched a trio of fire-eaters perform.

And then Lady Alerie took Sansa's hand, drew her gaze away to the doors, and Sansa's breath caught in her ribs, the wildness there stilling for the first time in so long.

Willas' hair had been shorn short at the sides, leaving naught but a shiny tumble of curls atop his head. With his cheeks shaved bare he looked younger than bearded Garlan, and wearing clothes that actually  _fit_ he seemed slighter, too, more elegant despite the inelegance of his crutches.

Sansa released her breath, and smiled, and rose to her feet to greet him.  _My husband,_ she thought, and for the first time there was no tremor of fear behind those words.


End file.
